Songs and Spouts and Spinners Too!

On Friday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise, we saw 6 different Humpbacks including a pod of three who spent about 45 minutes on the surface right next to our boat. We watched them pec slap a few times, and sort of do some shallow, twisting dives. At one point they came right up to the boat, looking at us while we looked at them. When we deployed the hydrophone, the sounds we heard were incredibly clear (and included some new phrases we hadn’t heard before).

On Saturday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise we 4 different Humpbacks — a pod of two adults, who we watched spout several times, and Mom and baby. Mom and her calf surfaced close to the boat giving us a great finale for the cruise.

On Saturday’s Snorkel and Whale Watch Adventure Cruise, we watched a lone adult at the surface. Later in the cruise, we saw Mom and calf. The baby was much more interested in us than Mom was, and swam up next to us. Mom was pretty permissive, not blocking her baby…just letting him investigate this strange, noisy thing floating near him!

Saturday’s 10:00 Cruise began with a pod of probably 100 dolphins who decided that hanging out with the Alala was a good time! We saw lots of spinning and leaping and bow wake riding, and even some flips. We finally had to leave the dolphins to check out some humpbacks. We saw a couple of blows to our south, and watched as those whales sounded. And then, as we were scouting the horizon we saw a double breach, and then another double breach, and then a third double breach. That last one sealed the deal, and we committed to a full-throttle 3 mile journey to catch the action. By the time we got there, the whales had sounded, but we waited around and got to see them surface twice more before heading back to the harbor. And on the way back, we saw one more blow about 1000 yards off our port side.

On Sunday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise, we saw lots and lots of spouts from many different Humpbacks. At one point we were sitting quietly between a whale at our 11:00 and a whale at our 1:00, waiting to see if they’d surface again, so we deployed our hydrophone and got to listen to some incredible singing. After listening awhile and deciding our 11:00 and 1:00 whales were long gone, we pulled in the hydrophone and started motoring again only to be completely surprised by two whales who surfaced and spouted at our 3:00 only about 50 feet from the boat! Of course we all started shouting, trying to encourage them to come closer to us, but they must have been on a mission of their own as they continued in their path, eventually sounding and disappearing from sight.

Mahalo,

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Being mammals, a Humpback has a belly button (or as we say in Hawaii, “piko”) – in case you’re wondering, it’s an “inny”.